Any discussion of the background art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
Object-oriented computer programs make use of business objects for representing aspects or items that the program is intended to support. For example, business objects may be defined to describe the likes of employees, invoices, access control cards, and so on. Generally speaking, business objects are defined within a business layer, which interposes a presentation layer, which is responsible for the delivery of a user interface to a client, with a back-end database.
Modification and/or addition of business objects in the business layer is typically a complex task. As such, once a business object is defined, there is limited scope for flexibility to modify the business object (for example where there is a desire to modify an existing business object to include one or more new fields, rules or methods). This can be particularly inhibiting where a desire exists to implement a given application in multiple business environments, or where a business environment changes over time.